Incidents of European legal intervention and their effects on extant Igbo laws: A study of Chinua Achebe’s Things fall apart and Arrow of God

Abstract

The coming of the Europeans to Igbo society introduced new and foreign/strange ways of handling issues in the society. One among the foreign/strange practices is the European legal intervention. In these Achebe’s prose texts Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God, the protagonists, Okonkwo and Ezeulu who, in their communities, were in positions of power as well as the custodians of Igbo culture in their various capacities fell victim of these foreign/strange legal practices. Their victimization, in effect, destroyed the very string that held parts of the core of their socio-cultural and political heritage. The new order deeply injured the organizational/managerial socio-cultural structures of the revered principles of leadership, cultural values and norms in Igbo society; and things never remained the same again. The aim of this paper is to expose the extent of the foreign influences and the ensued cultural conflict and trauma that emanated as a result of the insensitive imposition of European legal system on Igbo society with its utter disregard to the Igbo extant laws and ideals as depicted in the two novels under study.